Animal Bar
by CSIGeekFan
Summary: What happens when Nick and Greg decide to stop off an have a couple of drinks? Please R&R.  I'm hoping someone out there likes it, or finds it at least slightly amusing.


To D.A. – Thanks for another challenge. I think I'll go for a little humor with Nick and Greg, this time around. Hopefully, it's decent. The challenge took awhile longer to figure out that the other story I wrote today.

Challenge: The only challenge to this is I have to use "No one noticed the cat" somewhere in the story.

Disclaimer: CBS, we bow to you. CSI bows to you. The WORLD bows to you, because you own CSI.

A/N: Please R&R

Animal Bar(n)

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Nick and Greg had been out drinking waaayyyyy too long after work. Not going home from the dive until early afternoon, they had each passed out shortly after their respective cabs dropped them off.

Unfortunately, Greg hadn't even made it to the floor of his apartment. Instead, he'd laid sprawled across the steps to his apartment complex for over an hour. The only reason he managed to crawl to his front door and fall asleep on the doorstep was because the elderly woman with the metal cane kept poking him.

It was nearly six in the evening before his neighbor, Larry, Greg's middle-aged neighbor and retired hippy, walked over and woke him up.

"Hey. Dude. GREG!" Larry yelled.

"Ack!" was the only reply Greg could come up with. "Shhhhhh….. too loud," he continued.

The neighbor just chuckled, and asked, "Need help getting in?"

"Kinda," replied a not-quite-sober Greg. "Can't seem to get the key in the door."

Larry took the keys out of Greg's hands, unlocked the door, and helped Greg stand. After pointing him in the general direction of the door and giving him a push, the neighbor watched Greg stumble into his apartment, and lay out flat on the floor not even ten feet in. He put the keys on a small table just inside the door and went home, chuckling.

It was about six o'clock when his phone rang, sounding like a shrill siren.

Grabbing his head, Greg moaned. It wasn't until after the fourth ring, followed by the machine, then followed by someone calling _again_ that he figured he'd better answer the darn thing before it killed him.

"Yup," he greeted, "I'm dead and this is hell."

On the other side of town, Gil Grissom stared into the phone for about ten seconds.

"Greg," he calmly spoke into his cell, "I need you to come into the office before shift tonight. Make it around 11:00, okay?"

Not hearing a response, Grissom prompted again, "Okay?"

"'Kay," replied Greg, then hung up on his boss.

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Nick didn't have nearly the problem with passing out in a staircase that Greg had. No, Nick passed out in a thorny rose-bush on the side of his house. He eventually woke up when two particularly sharp thorns had embedded themselves in his ear. The throbbing in his rather bruised eye hadn't helped matters, either.

After much fumbling, Nick managed to open his front door, find his couch, and crash without a single thought in his head.

At about six o'clock that evening, the phone managed to jar him awake that evening, long before he should've been awake.

On the second ring, he yanked it up and answered, "Nick's Naughty Kitties… I got two of whatever you want…"

For the second time, Grissom held the phone away from his ear and stared at it for about ten seconds.

"Nick," Grissom eventually said, "I need you in at work an hour early tonight. Around 11:00, okay?"

Sitting up, Nick groggily said, "Gotcha," and hung up on his boss.

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Nick and Greg arrived within moments of each other, at 11:00 that night, both hung over and feeling like their heads were time bombs, waiting to explode.

"Okay, Nick, just what _were _we drinking last night?" Greg asked.

"I'm not totally sure. But I think it had a lot more alcohol in it than I originally thought," Nick replied.

"Gee…. ya THINK?" Greg half hollered. His fuzzy memory from the previous evening did not lend itself to recalling just what and how much he'd consumed. He recalled being poured into a cab by a waiter, shortly after Nick had been forcibly thrown into his own cab by the bouncer. He even remembered the events of the night. Greg just couldn't remember what he'd actually been drinking to get him to this point.

"Out of curiosity," Nick attempted to ask nonchalantly, "what _did_ I do to end up with this black eye?"

Giving a snort of a laugh, Greg sat at the break room table, stooped in his chair, and closed his eyes.

"Dude," Greg laughed, "Do you not remember the raccoon or vulture?"

"Huh?" Nick asked, completely confused.

"I'm assuming you don't recall the rabid dog or bunny, either!" Greg exclaimed.

"Greg, just what the _hell_ are you talking about?" Nick demanded.

"Oh, come on, Nick. You must remember the animals getting loose on the pool tables," Greg snorted.

He continued, "People are running right and left, some are screaming, and you're giving a full history of the biology of each creature."

Greg laughed at Nick's stunned look, and Nick sat down heavily in the chair across from Greg.

"Greg, that still doesn't explain the black eye, okay?"

"Oh, Nick… I'm getting there," Greg said.

"Apparently, you're a complete encyclopedia when it comes to animals. Animal Planet, right?" Greg asked.

"Well," he continued, "A few people actually listened as you described the raccoon. A couple of hot girls even gave you their attention when you told them it could attack at will and they were way too pretty to lose their faces to a pissed off raccoon."

"I really said that?" Nick asked. "Did I at least get a phone number?"

"Actually, this blond gave you her number shortly after we got there," Greg said. "Of course, when she thought you'd lost your mind, she decided to take it back. That may have been when you graphically explained what happened to someone who was bitten by a rabid dog."

Nick moaned loudly and dropped his head onto the table.

From this position, he mumbled, "I'm never going to be able to go back there, am I?"

Greg, apparently really getting into the story, rubbed his hands together in glee and continued, "Dude, you were so hammered, you probably don't even remember the vulture that hopped from pool table to pool table, until it rested on one of the beams, do you?"

Nick really didn't want to know anymore after this. He groaned into the table, but it didn't deter Greg.

"Oh, man. You stood on top of one of the pool tables, and gave a great impersonation of a vulture's mating call. It was AWESOME!" Greg laughed.

Nick really wished the floor would just open up and swallow him whole.

"Tell me," Nick asked, "How exactly did I get the black eye in all of this? I haven't heard anything about that yet."

"Dude, are you sure you don't remember any of this?" Greg asked.

Nick slowly shook his head and sighed. He vaguely recalled getting to the bar and the first two drinks. But after that, it became nothing but a fuzzy haze.

"Greg, I have vague memories here and there, but nothing distinct," Nick moaned. "What did I do?"

"Actually, I distinctly remember when you got the black eye," Greg happily told Nick.

"It had to do with explaining to this rather large biker's girl that bunnies really weren't all that far away from rodents in the big scheme of thing. Unfortunately, since Bubba's girl is big into bunnies, she took extreme offense at your comparison to rodents, thus Bubba took offense at this and proceeded to punch you with his really huge fist."

Greg sat back in his chair, grinned, then said, "That's when all hell broke loose, man. Pool sticks flying through the air, pool balls getting thrown like baseballs. Punches being thrown left and right."

Nick sat back in his chair, really wishing the evening hadn't happened. He wished he'd just stayed home last night.

With a sigh, he got up from his chair, wandered over to the TV, and flipped it on. _Just my luck,_ Nick though, cringing. _Animal Planet is on_. Sinking onto the sofa, Nick reached for the remote when something on the TV caught his eye, and a flash memory of last night entered his fuzzy brain.

"Hey," Nick said to Greg, "no one noticed the cat."


End file.
